The Slower Days
by lucelafonde
Summary: Clara's school becomes an object of interest for the Doctor, and he decides to join the teaching staff until he figures out what's going on. [12th Doctor/Clara]


_NOTE: Although I could never see any chemistry between 11 and Clara, her and 12 are off the charts. It hits all the right spots for me, so I couldn't resist. Also, I love Danny to bits, he's amazing, but this is not his story. Regardless, any hatred you might harbour for him has no place here, so please refrain from spreading it around._

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><p>Maybe he had become bored on his own, lonely, and had made up a fancy story about brain-energy-sucking aliens in her school to have an excuse to stick around for a while. Maybe he had felt that Clara was slowly but steadily moving away from him, always just within his reach, but how much longer? How long until she would take that final step and when he said "I need you" the reply would not be a long-suffering sigh accompanied by an affectionate "alright then" but a distant "I'm sorry" and a definite goodbye?<p>

Maybe he had thought about these things and was trying to hold on to whatever was left of the connection they once had.

Maybe there really were brain-energy-sucking aliens in her school. That was way more likely anyway, Clara thought, and wondered whether she was projecting her own fears on the Doctor.

Yeah. Definitely aliens.

She wasn't absolutely sure how he'd done it, but he'd somehow convinced the administration to employ him as a temporary history teacher, and the thought of him in that classroom made her laugh when he told her.

"What? What's that giggling for?" he asked, expression seeming mildly offended.

"Nothing," she assured him quickly, a broad smile she couldn't quite suppress still plastered over her face, "just never thought I'd see you teach a couple of young children, is all. You don't seem to have the, er…"

"Qualifications?"

"Temperament."

They shared a long look that told her he really didn't, which only convinced her further that those aliens of his must be mighty interesting indeed for him to suffer through the job of a teacher for a few weeks. She adored the man, and she wouldn't have him any other way, but really, patience was definitely NOT his strong suit. It never had been, but this particular incarnation seemed even less inclined to bother with the stupidity of others than the previous had. She could already see him arguing about history books and how wrong they were with his students, and she made a mental note to check on him every once in a while. Often.

"Anyway, it shouldn't take too long. A couple of weeks, at most," he said, and Clara heard 'less than a few days, I hope.'

"If you say so," she murmured, pushing herself off the railing in the console room she had been leaning against, and faced him with an oddly amused expression on her face. "Guess that makes us colleagues then, ey?"

"Well, obviously this is only a cover story, and it's only temporary— actually, barely even that, and I really don't think—"

"COLLEAGUES," she interrupted him merrily, knowing better than anyone that once he got started, he might never stop, and anyway, his denial wasn't even the slightest bit convincing anyway.

His eyes locked with hers for a moment, no sounds but the calming humming of the TARDIS filling the console room, and eventually he nodded, admitting defeat as always, and said, "It would appear so."

Her smile broadened, and she said "Well then, see you at work!" before she skipped out of the TARDIS and closed the door behind her.

#

They were strangers in public, and Clara thought she faked the mild interest she had in the new teacher quite well when the headmaster introduced them. The Doctor went under 'John Smith' here, she noticed, but he had somehow managed to get everyone to call him 'Doctor' anyway. His eyes sparkled when he took her hand at their introduction, and Clara tried really, really hard not to laugh.

She was only moderately successful as she couldn't quite suppress a grin when the headmaster praised the Doctor's qualifications to the heavens, neither of them really paying attention as their eyes shared in a private joke. She didn't notice that he hadn't let go of her hand until the headmaster excused himself and left them to their own devices.

He let go before she could, and his hands wandered into the pockets of his trousers as they were wont to. She followed the movement, only now noticing that he had traded in his long coat and waistcoat for a black cardigan, and she smiled almost fondly at the effort he was making to blend in.

"Nice outfit," she commented, tone affectionately teasing as she gave him an obvious once-over.

He looked down on himself, following the path of her eyes, and admitted with a mildly troubled frown between his own, "Not entirely convinced about the cardigan, to be honest."

"Then why'd you wear it?" she asked, observing the offending piece of clothing more closely, lightly tugging at it when she removed a hair from the bottom. The fabric was soft, cosy, and it definitely fit the weather around here. It wasn't too different from his usual look, and she thought it suited him exceedingly well. It wasn't what the Doctor would wear, maybe, but this John Smith? Yeah. Definitely a good choice.

He shrugged, barely glancing down at her hands when she tugged at him. He still wasn't too big on the hugging thing, but at least he wasn't flinching away anymore when she touched him, and Clara counted that as a definite victory. "It seemed like a teacher thing to wear."

She was already taking a breath to argue about what that was even supposed to mean when she recalled that she herself was wearing a cardigan at the very moment and had done so more than a few times in the past. The offence she had taken was hollow, and she felt fond amusement at the thought that he'd probably adjusted his wardrobe based on her example. No teasing then. Or at least not TOO much.

"Well, I think it looks rather dashing," she said simply, checking her watch for a second before looking back up again and patting him reassuringly on the shoulder. "Looks like your first day is about to start, Doctor Smith. Remember, stick to the books. And no insulting the students. Best not throw anything either. Actually, you should probably just make them re-"

"Clara," he interrupted her, gently removing her hand from his shoulder, "this isn't the first time I've done this, trust me, it will be fine."

"Of course it will!" Her voice sounded a bit shrill perhaps, and the smile on her face a bit forced as she walked in the direction of her classroom, but she hoped he wouldn't notice. It wasn't that she didn't trust him, she just… didn't trust his suitability for social interactions. Oh boy. She wouldn't be able to relax until this day was over. And the next. And the next and the one after, for however long it took until the Doctor found what he had come for. "Meet you for lunch then?" she asked, turning around a few steps from him with an expectant look on her face. She really had to keep an eye on him.

"I don't think I—"

"Lunch," she repeated, and the look on her face stalled all arguments.

"Yes, ma'am."

#

A few days in, and it wasn't going as badly as she'd thought it would. From what she'd overheard from the students, the Doctor was a bit of an eccentric, and he passionately disagreed with almost everything they'd learnt so far, but he didn't scare them, and most of them even thought he was funny and were looking forward to his classes. She even overheard some of the other female teachers gossipping about him and discussing his 'good looks'.

Somehow they managed to drag her into the conversation, and although she'd seen the inside of a Dalek now, she wasn't sure whether this wasn't a much scarier place to be and the Doctor had been wrong. Nothing worse than a bunch of girls cornering you and asking about the boy you like— sadly, it didn't get much less terrifying with age, she noticed.

"What about it, Clara?" Sophie, the science teacher, asked curiously. "You've been spending a lot of time with him, haven't you? I always see you two sneaking off together in the breaks."

That was true, Clara admitted silently, but only because they were looking for a couple of aliens in the school. They weren't… doing whatever it was everyone apparently thought they were doing. Actually, it wasn't very pleasant at all. At one point, he'd dragged her into the darkest, dirtiest part of the basement and asked her to crawl under some machinery, where she had finally drawn the line.

Honestly, the thought of the Doctor snatching her for a quick round in the supply closet made her laugh, and she couldn't hide the smile surfacing on her face in time. The others seemed to take it as a kind of admission, because a moment later they were gasping and pointing and accusing her of 'stealing all the handsome men' with fake outrage.

"What? No!" she said quickly, trying to ward off the false assumptions in vain. "We're not— it's not how you think! We're friendly, that's all!"

"I wish I had a friend who looked at me like that," Marie sighed, and let her eyes wander down the hallway. Clara spotted Danny quickly hurrying past them, but before she could say anything, her eyes fell on the Doctor waiting at the corner and giving her a meaningful look.

Sighing, she grabbed her things and said with finality, "I don't look at him 'like that.'"

She could barely hear the reply, already several steps away, but it made her falter for a moment when the words finally rang in her head.

"Wasn't talking about you."

#

"This is it," she swore, crawling out of the last air duct she'd ever climb into. The Doctor's arms circled around her thighs, and she dropped easily into him, feeling the floor beneath her feet a moment later when he set her down. "No more crawling, no more tight spaces! Can you PLEASE just finally admit there's nothing here?"

He watched her pat herself down, dust circling in the air around them, and frowned mightily at her words. "There has to be! The energy signatures—"

"Yeah yeah…" she mumbled, straightening her clothes as she looked up with an unimpressed expression and considered him for a moment before her hands closed around his collar and decided to straightened it instead of strangling him. For the moment. The look in his eyes told her he wasn't unaware of her inner debate, and he wisely chose not to fight her this time. "Maybe you were wrong? There's probably a thousand other explanations, it doesn't have to be— Danny!"

Her hands dropped from the Doctor as if she'd been burned, and for one horrible moment she saw herself through the eyes of her colleagues and yes, she'd be lying if she said she didn't know what it looked like. Of COURSE she knew. Dishevelled and out of breath as they were from all the crawling in tight spaces, it probably couldn't be taken any other way, and as Danny looked at her from across the hallway, she realised that there was nothing she could say.

All the possible words raced through her head, but she knew they wouldn't carry over the air between them, still heavy with dust and impossible secrets, and in that moment she realised she didn't want to lie to him. He didn't deserve that. He didn't deserve any of it, he had the right to so much more, and when she exhaled, she saw the last particles of dust glimmer in the low sun shining through the window, and it was when she noticed that her eyes were fixed on them instead of Danny that it hit her.

She couldn't be what he needed her to be. She couldn't be his, because when they had had a date and the Doctor had told her he needed her, she had complained and protested and made him swear to get her back in time, but in the end she had done all that walking straight into the TARDIS and as soon as the doors had closed behind her, Danny had been all but forgotten.

The only way out of this, the only way this could work, would be telling him the truth, and there was no reason not to— she could easily grab him, take him down the hallway and push him into the TARDIS to see for himself if he didn't believe her, she could prove her story in a heartbeat and that knowledge made her shy away from saying anything at all.

She didn't want him to know, she realised, because she didn't want him to be a part of this. This thing, this chasing around the galaxy, travelling through time and space… it was their secret, THEIR thing, and she saw with sudden clarity that she didn't want to share it with anyone else— not even Danny.

In the end, she said nothing, lacking the right words to soften the blow, and Danny didn't seem to expect to hear anything either, because he simply turned and walked around the corner without looking back.

"I didn't think anyone would still be here," the Doctor said somewhat apologetically, although Clara wasn't certain how much he had picked up, not knowing about her relationship with Danny. It didn't matter. They had waited until school was over for the day and everyone had left to do this, and if Danny had forgotten something and turned back, it wasn't the Doctor's fault he hadn't anticipated it. She didn't have it in herself to blame him, not when she had just made the decision to reconsider her priorities.

She needed time to think, time to decide what she wanted to do with her life, and this was neither the time nor place to do it. "Come on, then. There's nothing here, and I could really do with a shower."

#

Danny was braver than her, the first to break the silence, and she would be endlessly grateful for that. Really, he was perfect, she thought, and it only strengthened her resolve to end things with him for good. He could do a lot better than her, could find someone who would give him a hundred percent, and she knew keeping him around in an attempt to cling to normalcy wasn't fair. She only hoped she hadn't hurt him in the process of figuring that out.

"Hey," he greeted her in the hallway, awkwardly fidgeting with the straps of his bag, and she knew he knew but was too tactful to accuse her. "So about dinner…"

Her face twisted into an apologetic grimace, and the fact that he didn't look surprised helped keep herself together while the guilt was gnawing at her.

"Yeah, I figured that much," he admitted, shyly scratching his head but never breaking eye contact. "I had to ask though. Just to be sure."

She smiled, fondly watching him fidget in front of her like HE had been the one to screw up. "Danny… I'm sorry it didn't work out, I really am."

"Oh, please— Please no 'it's not you, it's me' speech," he said quickly, groaning in fake pain, "I think my ego's probably bruised enough as it is."

"You'd be surprised how fitting it would be," Clara mumbled, bravely meeting his eyes when she offered him her hand and said louder, "Alright, no speech. But I do happen to be quite fond of you, Mr Pink, so if maybe… I dunno. You could bear with another terrible cliche, I'd really like to be friends."

He observed her for a moment, eyes trailing up and down her body with an unreadable squint, and Clara supposed she deserved him making this hard on her, but dammit, she'd really meant it, and she'd hate to lose him completely. Danny might be too perfect a boyfriend for her, but she absolutely wouldn't mind being his friend. In fact, she thought she could really use one, and she had the feeling so could he.

"Alright then, Miss Oswald. Friends it is," he said and caught her hand in a strong grip. "It's probably for the best anyway, but your boyfriend sure is a lucky guy."

"Shut up, he's not my—" She saw the small smile blooming on his face and laughed, lightly hitting his arm as she felt relief wash over her. Danny was easy. Danny was comfortable. In another life, he might have been the one, and a part of her envied that version of her, but she knew that this one, this Clara, would not be satisfied with easy and comfortable.

#

They found the alien ship underneath the school through the sewage system a few days later, and Clara made the Doctor swear NEVER to drag her into an adventure like that again when the ship was disabled, the aliens relocated to their home planet, and the stench had left the console room. He agreed for the moment, but Clara knew better than to take him by his word because as soon as the next opportunity presented itself, he would be dragging her through the sewers and she would be following him. That much she could trust in, and there was a strange comfort in the knowledge that some things remained constant, even if they were not always pleasant.

"So I guess that means you're done teaching, doesn't it?" she said over her shoulder, standing in the doorway of the TARDIS as it circled their last passengers' home planet. She liked looking at the stars like this, surrounding them like peaceful guardians, and for a moment she felt incredibly small. Just one tiny human in this endless galaxy, and she was standing here, right here, in a blue box that was bigger on the inside with a cranky old man at her back, and that was the biggest thing that she could imagine, after everything she'd seen. Of all the people on all the planets in all of time and space, it had been her. He had chosen her, and no one else, and Clara realised she didn't need to be big to matter.

She could feel him approach her from behind, and a moment later she heard his voice close to her ear saying, "I would think so, yes. Can't waste my days away in school forever."

"Do Time Lords have schools?" she asked curiously, eyes briefly glancing towards him standing next to her in the doorway. "Oh I bet you hated that. Sitting still all day long? I can hardly imagine."

His eyes told her everything she needed to know, and she decided to quit teasing him for the moment. They stood in the light of the stars for a moment, enveloped by the quiet of the universe, and Clara made a decision. If not now, not ever. She needed to know. Either way, she needed to know how much was too much. Where she had to draw the line between this life and the one on earth.

Turning towards the Doctor fully now, she said, "Sorry, can I try something?"

There was a curious sparkle in his eyes when he faced her, and he nodded almost imperceptibly. Taking a deep breath, bracing herself for what she was about to do, Clara put a hand on the back of his head and pulled him downward as she stood on her toes and pressed her lips lightly to his. His hair wasn't soft, but somehow more so than it looked, and too short to get a proper grip on so her fingers scraped over his scalp, and his lips were thin and not really made for kissing. He was too tall for her, even with the heels she wore and him bent down she had to stretch to reach him and she knew it would be getting uncomfortable fast.

She didn't want anything else.

She had been concerned, or rather uncertain about whether his new looks would change things, if she would still feel the same way now that he looked older, but it took less than a second of his lips pressed to hers to realise that this was something that wasn't going away. In fact, she thought it had only gotten worse. His last incarnation had been young and dorky and cute in his flailing about like a baby animal, and she had adored him, and yes, she admitted quietly to herself, she had fancied him. He had been attractive then, but more than that, he had been HIM, and it would take a stronger woman than her to resist a man who travelled around time and space to save the universe.

She had fancied the last one, but she realised now, almost hearing her heart race in her chest through the silence of the universe around them, that she was in love with this one, this Doctor. It wasn't a fleeting fancy anymore, and no matter how hard she tried to deny it, she had lost the fight over her heart a long time ago. Madame Vastra had called the last Doctor her 'lover', and perhaps that was right, perhaps that was what he might have been in another life, but not this one, never this one. He was more, much more than that, and she was terrified he could hear it in the painful beating of her heart.

She took a quick step back, leaning against the door frame of the TARDIS, and met his eyes with barely veiled expectant terror. What now? She didn't know. She hoped he wouldn't ask her, because she thought if he did she might fall apart entirely. What did one do when they were in love with an ageless god? She didn't know. She didn't want to know.

"So?" he asked eventually, eyeing her curiously as she stood and stared as if he'd grown a second head.

"So what?" she countered, voice almost steady, almost not breaking under his heavy gaze, and she willed her legs to hold.

"Where do you want to go next? It's your turn." He sounded aloof and carefree as he always did when they discussed where to travel, and for a moment Danny flashed in front of her eyes, easy and comfortable, and she pushed herself off and closed the door before following him back to the centre of the room.

"Mhm, you'll laugh and say there's no such thing again if I do," she said, leaning against the console as he worked the levers.

"Try me."

"Alright." She smiled, mentally preparing herself for the inevitable. "The restaurant at the end of the universe."

He halted in his movements for a moment, clearly not having expected that, and stared at her in silence before a small smile spread on his lips and he pulled the final lever, waiting for the noise of the TARDIS to quiet down before he sprinted towards the door and held his hand out for her. "Don't you think it can't be done," he warned her playfully, and a moment later her hand was in his and he was already dragging her out the door. "Of course, this is a time sensitive matter and I would not recommend sticking around for too long. You never know what might happen, after all. Or, in this case, know what might happen and definitely leave before it does."

She laughed, unperturbed by the prospect of witnessing the end of the universe for the moment, because when he turned around, she could see the answer to her question right there in his eyes.

What now? Now they got into trouble and out of it, and after that, after everything, he would still be looking at her like that, no longer the boy who fancied her like she had fancied him, but a man who had begged her to see him for who he was because the thought of losing her had been unbearable. It was neither easy nor comfortable, not with them, but it was just the right amount of difficult, and that was exactly what she needed.

"We're not going to have dinner here, are we?" she asked when a familiar feeling of unease made her skin crawl upon entering the restaurant.

He looked up at the flashing warning lights colouring the inside of the restaurant a sinister shade of red and yelled over the blaring noise of the alarm when he turned to face her, eyes brimming with excitement, "We could always eat later?"


End file.
